


Colors

by rightmanham



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, M/M, autistic hamilton, read some color theory stuff and got inspired, this was some really really good practice for descriptive writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 00:57:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8823604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightmanham/pseuds/rightmanham
Summary: Alexander Hamilton was intelligent. As such, his thought process wasn't usually in numbers and coherent thoughts. It was jumbled feelings and memories.But mostly colors.





	

Alexander Hamilton was intelligent. It was the glint in his eyes, the way his words flowed together that made people want to stop and listen. As such, his thought process wasn't normally in numbers and coherent thoughts. It was jumbled feelings and vague memories. 

But mostly, colors. 

Gray was of his earliest memories. It was the color of the skies on most days, rain drizzling onto the dirt roads. It radiated off the slaves being sold in the town and permeated the wood of the wagons they were carted in. It was a helplessness Alexander could relate to from a young age. Looking up at the clouds, gray was to him never getting off Nevis. 

His favorite color has always been orange. It was the sugary flavor of the juicy fruit on summer days when his mother could afford two of them. The heat from the ablaze ship that brought him to America. Laughing drunkenly with his new friends in a bar, Hercules Mulligan's arm slung over Alexander's smaller shoulders as Lafayette led them in the chorus of a sea shanty. 

A teal blanket covered Alexander's eyes whenever George Washington was around. It followed him like a small tsunami, rushing around everyone in the vicinity and lapping at their ankles. While writing letters as his aide-de-camp, the bright color stained the parchment and made the ink bleed. Despite being everywhere, it always managed to calm Alexander. He could understand why people naturally gravitated towards Washington. 

Pink was love. It colored his cheeks at the winter ball of 1780 when he kissed Eliza Schuyler for the first time in the cramped hallway outside the ball room. It curled out of his mouth as like smoke when he had a late night discussion with Angelica. It was the soft tint of the sunlight glancing off John Laurens' freckles. His mother was brimming with a hot pink almost constantly, before he had to leave her at the top of a forgotten hill. He knew the tendrils of attachment claimed many victims for him, but Alexander cared deeply about most people and never really learned how to stop. It faded into a dull salmon with loss, but yes. Pink was always there. 

Home for Alexander was a deep brown. Not Nevis, which had always felt more like a stepping stone, but instead, America. New York, more specifically. He could smell it in the spices Eliza made dinner with, and the soil of the small garden they had in the small backyard. The same soil that five-year-old Philip had made a mud-pie out of and proudly thrust into Alexander's lap, sporting a missing front teeth grin. The creak of a leather saddle as Alexander raced home after the war. The curl of his newborn children's hair, perfectly framing their round faces. 

Dark blue could reliably be associated with pain. The color of Washington's eyes as his and Alexander's faces were mere inches apart, both of them fuming. Blue splattered across his military-issue uniform as Lafayette was shot in front of him, and it pooled on the grass as a medic dragged his friend away. It soaked the bed sheets of his mother's sickbed as her body slowly went slack in the crook of his feverish frame. Rolling down Eliza's face and onto her no longer swollen stomach, blue were her tears of the confirmed fear of a miscarried baby. There was an endless amount of the color when he gazed up at the night sky, knife blade firmly pressed against his throat and contemplating whether he should just end it once and for all. 

Alexander was always resentful of green; congregating in the deep bags under his eyes as he spent another sleepless night on an article of The Federalist Papers. It trailed behind James Madison, much like the constant sickness that plagued the small man. Even after they'd long stopped talking, it lingered on Alexander like a bad cologne. And, much to his dismay, green was the decided color of the new United States currency, an unabating reminder of his impoverished roots. 

Purple was a frustrating color. Jefferson reeked of enough of it to make Alexander gag. It tinged his words whenever he made a snarky comment at any of their cabinet meetings and Alexander had to ball his hand in a fist inside his pocket to refrain from punching the taller man. He was also certain that it was bubbled inside his chest when he was forced to stay home and try to get his plan approved by Congress. Purple was what crinkled the edges of his parchment when his writing lapsed in and out of English and French, a side effect of his bilinguity when he was tired. It was a firm belief that blue and red never led to anything good. 

Maroon had never existed in Alexander's life until Maria Reynolds. She had been the small spark that ignited years of it. She oozed it, though not by any fault of her own. It was flecked in her curly hair, coating her lips, pulsing off her body as she inched her hand up Alexander's thigh. The color clouded his vision as he published The Reynolds Pamphlet and he didn't think anything of it until it was too late. It seemed to freeze in the look of betrayal in Angelica's eyes, and then turned to a fiery rage in Philip's hard set frown. Most of all, it was the melted wax that dripped down the candle Eliza used to burn his love letters with. Alexander wished he'd never known maroon. 

Red was nearly unbearable. It tinted the edges of his vision as his eldest son spluttered deliriously in his arms, and brightened to a glare at the crack of the fired pistol that was responsible for it. Red was the cause of his knees continuous giving out on him at the funeral, and having to be supported by Governor Morris. Red was the cause of Eliza's sobs as she leaned into Angelica, her small body shaking. The color was the weighted feeling of dread as he skimmed over the letter from Henry Laurens that gave him the heartbreaking news of the death of his love. The metallic tang of blood as he bit his tongue in order to stay quiet to avoid an argument wherever he went.

His last few years were monochromatic.

White was the sarcastic letters he exchanged with Aaron Burr. The careful swoop of the latter's handwriting in stark contrast with Alexander's rushed letters that sometimes blurred together if he didn't focus. An agreement of a duel at Weehawken and the lie he'd have to tell his wife to assure her of his safety. That morning, the cravat he hastily tied around his neck was white. 

The duel was black. Black hair (okay maybe a little more silver than black at this point, he'd admitted), black wire rim glasses, black coat. It was all around him, from the angry glare of Burr to the early morning air that sent shivers down his spine. It was the color of the bullet's path as it shot towards him. The crunch of two of his ribs as they shattered on impact. Blurring his eyesight and rattling off the wall with Eliza's screams, black was his last memory.

 

fin.


End file.
